Hi Agung,

After my last email, I've received several questions relating to how I managed to grow and monetise my niche YouTube channel.

The one I was referring to in my last email was my Diabetes Smarts channel.

Though the principles that I followed do apply to anyone wanting to do well with organic traffic from YouTube.

If I wanted to sell a physical product, or a range of physical products, I'd follow a similar strategy.

(See my tips for how I'd go about running a channel that sold toasters at the end of this email)

And I've already mapped out and started work on several new channels in 2021.

Here are my top 5 tips for starting and growing a YouTube channel from scratch (starting at number 5 and working our way to number 1)…

Number 5 - Consistently release videos at a regular schedule

YT wants channels that live and breathe, not ones that just have a bunch of videos that sit there.

So by regularly keeping to releasing videos on a weekly basis, you're sending a message that your channel lives and breathes and continues to grow.

It can take time for this to kick in, as far as the algorithm is concerned, so it's important to commit to maintaining this rate for an extended period of time.

For me it took several months before our channel achieved 'lift off' and suddenly YT started showing our videos to our 'non subscribers' to a huge extent.

But now we get tens of thousands of views every day from our non subscribers, which also helps grow our subscriber base.

Number 4 - Maintain high standards of video editing and content

I've experimented with different standards of video editing (heck I have a marketing tips channel that has pretty lazy video editing on my part, despite having top level content)…

…And I've found that channels that have poor editing and/or quick and short content, have not done well for me (yet).

Our sweet spot for the Diabetes Smarts channel has been about 2000-2500 words per script.

So that's about 13-17 minutes per video.

You may find channels out there with successful 5 minute videos, but it's hard to find brand new channels doing well with videos that are so short these days.

It's like how people used to have all these 500 word articles, and then all of a sudden Google started favouring more richly dense articles… Ones that had higher 'time on site' and lower 'bounce' rates.

So now you see with google, mostly 2000+ word articles, are the ones that dominate in terms of 'information' type keyword searches.

It's becoming similar with YouTube, at least in terms of newer channels.

We make sure to edit our videos to look nice, and contain well researched content.

As a result we end up with a high average view time (6 mins 30 seconds and above, for a 13 min video)…

…And very high likes to dislikes ratio (about 97% and above most of the time).

This sends positive signals and has helped grow our trust within YT.

Number 3 - Foster Curiosity

It's really important that curiosity is prioritised…

So at the start of the video, you need to get people to wonder about a few things.

For instance you need to set the premise of the video (what are you looking to find out by the end?)

And also what is coming up in the video itself.

Often we've found that 'list' type videos work the best, as naturally people want to get to find out what is number 1 in the list…

…Hey, isn't that what I just did in this email too? Yep, I did that on purpose based on what I learned about what works on YT this year and I applied it to my email :)

Another important area to foster curiosity is the thumbnail images.

If people don't look at those and get curious enough to click them at a high rate, then YT also will not show them in the 'suggested videos' area, and then you won't get a lot of views.

Thumbnail design and curiosity is of vital importance.

Number 2 - Capture emails and mail them your new videos

We've found that by giving away a free gift in each of our videos, and then mailing that email list each time we release a new video…

…That has enabled each new video to gain velocity right away.

Yes, YTube will show our videos to those who subscribed to our channel (at least to a selection of them, say 10%)…

…But it's sending such a positive signal to YT when people are willing to go back and watch more videos EVEN WITHOUT being sent there by YT.

I think this has given me a competitive advantage over other channels in this niche, and we have the fastest growing channel in the space.

In order to capture emails effectively, make sure to place the link to the free gift in the first or second line of the description (so that it still shows on the preview of the description).

Number 1 - Find a way to get to 1000 subscribers

I took months to get to 1000 subscribers.

Then I finally bit the bullet and advertised some of my videos as 'discovery' videos.

Specifically:

Product and brand consideration > Influence consideration > video discovery ads

So that meant that they showed above suggested videos, but not as 'in stream video ads'

I found that it costed me about $1 per new subscriber to the channel.

And I just left ads running until I reached 1000 subscribers.

Nothing happened immediately, but within 4 weeks, my videos started taking off a lot quicker.

And within 8 weeks, I was suddenly getting over 300 subscribers per day, and within a month of that it was up to 500 plus per day.

I think that YT does not want to be the 'guinea pig' and take little risk with new channels that have not done anything to establish subscribers.

But by paying a little and getting to over 1000, and then getting metrics showing the average watch time is pretty good… Likes to dislikes are good, etc (due to quality content)…

…That's what lead to it eventually taking off.

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So that's it from me for today's email, my top 5 tips for growing a YT channel from scratch.

These tips can work for many different types of channels. I like doing them for information topics and to promote information products.

But this would also work well for physical products.

Like if I wanted to sell toasters, then I'd be thinking of videos like:

• Top 10 toasters
• Top 10 things to put on toast in the morning
• 5 worst things to put on toast in the morning
• Best 5 types of toast for weight loss
• Olive oil plus secret ingredient (healthy toast spread)

And could easily make hundreds of videos that kept subtly pushing that toaster (or range of toasters for different types of toast / toasties).

I hope you enjoyed today's email.

I hope your Christmas preparations are going well (if you celebrate it), and if not, have a great time of the year regardless :)

Kind regards,

Mark Ling Founder of Traffic Travis https://www.traffictravis.com